Zion Oil & Gas Inc (ZNOG)

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As many have noted the events of 2018 are now muzzling what ZNOG is willing to say.

"When in Feb 2018 ZN announced 'oil in the drilling mud' many took that as the definitive pronouncement and pps doubled in ca a day- And the fallout was a complaint to the sec and an informal civilian sec investigation followed by shareholder lawsuits-the latter were all dismissed in what was a de facto summary judgment in each case in favor of ZN.(a 500k retainer of which ca 150k was returned to ZN because of the summary judgments in ZN's favor)."

announcing oil in the drilling mud is very innocent compared to announcing a well is commercial-and yet that simple innocent announcement led to several shareholder lawsuits suing b/d's individually for having violated their fiduciary duty etc

derivative shareholder lawsuits- suing board members supposedly on behalf of the corporation for violation of their fiduciary duty- has several effects - during the open lawsuit period ZNOG and the board are controlled by lawyers who muzzle them-an effect which partially continues even after all the lawsuits were eventually summarily dismissed-in ZNOG's favor.

Even in the absence of lawyers, all the board members now know they have to be very careful in what they say
shareholder suits logically raise a wall between shareholders and ZNOG b/d and officers
who are now very aware of negligence,intent and fiduciary duty
a previous post of mine referred to such things
when discussing certain things at the meeting they showed fiduciary duty as one of 2 reasons on the right lower corner of the screen
fiduciary duty is one of the highest if not the highest duty known to the law. I have personally known lawyers get disbarred for violating it even though there was no intent to violate it and the otherwise (unusually) good lawyer temporarily got caught between a rock and a hard place and truly had every intention of making it right as soon as possible.

fiduciary duty
https://lawyer.zone/fiduciary-duty/

Normally in the context of the officers and directors of a publicly held corp in their relationship to stock holders item # 13 - duty of disclosure- is involved- i.e.,that the corp has not divulged ENOUGH info re something to meet the standard

but in 2018 ZNOG was sued by upset stockholders who were tired of waiting and thus claimed many things,including without going back to the docs- carelessness and negligence in the oil in the drilling mud comment which ultimately led to a complaint which led to the sec investigation

so now that duty to disclose (fiduciary duty) is almost turned on its head -where instead of znog being sued for making a "misleading oil in the drilling mud" in the feb 2018 PR,ZNOG, as a result of the sec investigation and resulting shareholder lawsuits- ZNOG now has to practically withhold any information that is not approved by their lawyers (including 2 lawyer officer/board of director members) and OUTSIDE VERIFICATION etc
I know many are frustrated by IR but that puts IR in a very difficult situation-and IR is already usually a thankless job in normal times

so at the stockholder meeting you see Dunn and others restrained from answering some of the most obvious things-
like whether it is better to invest via the dspp or the open market- Dunn could have said what should be obvious-that DSPP bought shares directly financially aid ZNOG by providing ZNOG with most of the purchase price-whereas market bought shares only indirectly aid by the company by supporting the pps by increasing the market buy sell ratio- so being careful Dunn just said there are other entities(paraphrase) who can provide that information.
so now-and knowing major reasons why ZNOG is targeted- they know any statement not approved by legal or outside verification can be seen as careless ,negligent or as a violation of fiduciary duty

and so testing has to be completed and results audited by an independent 3rd party and probably approved at a board meeting and possibly by various israeli oil and security etc ministries before a statement of commerciality can be made